Sunday, September 30, 2012

As the Archivist of the United
States you are responsible for the
preservation of our country’s records, which are our national treasures – our “family
jewels,” and the documentation of our nation’s history since its founding.

Conducting an open and honest government is said to be one
of the hallmarks of the current administration, and the founding fathers
recognized that a democracy requires an informed electorate, one that has all
the information and facts necessary to make decisions that effect the
directions that the country will take in the future.

Over the course of our entire history no single event has
had such a catastrophic impact on our national political system than the
assassination of President Kennedy, mainly because of the unresolved nature of
the case in both legal and moral terms, and the continued withholding of
relevant records from the public.

Polls have consistently shown that the American public’s confidence in their
government began to decline shortly after the release of the Warren Report and
has continued to decline ever since. That confidence will never recover until
all of the government records on the assassination are released to the public.

When the Warren Commission concluded its work, Chief Justice
Earl Warren, in response to a question as to when all of its records would be
released, responded by saying, “Not in your lifetime.”

Then when the House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) disbanded, its records were sealed for a half-century and its second
chief counsel said that he could live with the judgment of historians in fifty
years.

Well the American people refused to accept those decisions,
and thanks to Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” a national consensus forced Congress
to pass the JFK Assassination Records Act of 1992, which was reluctantly signed
into law by President Bush that October, twenty years ago this month.

That law created the Assassinations Records Review Board
(ARRB), which despite releasing over 4 million pages of records, failed to
locate the unedited Air Force One radio transmission tapes, the documents of
Office of Naval Intelligence director Admiral Rufus Taylor and numerous other
records that remain among the government’s holdings but are not included in the
JFK Assassination Records Collection at the NARA.

Since the agencies and departments of government knew that
the ARRB was a temporary agency, they delayed responding to requests for
records, and intentionally kept relevant records from being reviewed or
becoming part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection.

Even among those records that were to be included, the CIA
has withheld over a thousand documents that have never been properly reviewed.
No one even knows how many pages they contain. Other clearly relevant records
were excluded, such as the Kefauver Committee records and the Bay of
Pigs report, because they were “deemed not relevant” or, like the
Joannidies/DRE documents, are considered
“operational” records. These are claimed to be exempted from release and are
now part of a major FOIA court case which should be resolved in the public’s
interest and the that of the CIA.

Some agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the
Secret Service, intentionally destroyed relevant records to keep them from
being released to the public, and those individuals responsible for the
destruction of these historic documents have never been properly questioned or
reprimanded for their actions.

Why haven’t you, as the Archivist of the United States,
requested Congress to hold mandated oversight hearings on the JFK Act, which
they haven’t done in fifteen years, and do its duty and properly oversee the law,
which has never been full enforced?

Why doesn’t the NARA,
as it has on the anniversaries of the Bay of Pigs,
Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis, release the remaining JFK records and
conduct a special program on the anniversary of the assassination?

These records were created by public servants working for
the government of the United States
and don’t belong to those who created them, the agencies they worked for or the
Kennedy family. They belong to the people of the United
States - they are a record of our history
and we want them now, not in 2017, or 2029 or never.

This is not about supporting or debunking conspiracy
theories. Before a national debate on the assassination can even begin, before
the anniversary of Kennedy’s death can be properly honored, before we can put
this tragedy behind us and move on, we must have all the facts. All the cards
must be on the table, the entire truth must be publicly known and no records
should be kept secret for reasons of "national security,” or to keep
agencies, administrators and bureaucrats from being embarrassed.

Fifty years ago there might have been good reasons to keep
some of these records secret but now, it is matter of our national security
that they be released to the public.

The provisions of the JFK Assassination Records Act require the full public
release of unredacted copies of all related records immediately, when the
reason for postponing release in each case is no longer current or relevant,
and no later than 2013, with the certification of the Archivist that all such
files have been released in full. There is no provision requiring that any file
not be released before 2013, it is at the discretion and review of the
Archivist to continue review and release until completed.

President Obama created an Executive Order requiring declassification without
review of all government records classified for more than 25 years. A
subsequent law required a review to be sure they did not contain information
regarding nuclear weapons before release, which has slowed the process. A NationalDeclassificationCenter
was created to expedite this massive release of files, well over 400 million
records. Yet, the individual agencies and the NARA
continue to block release of JFK assassination files classified now for almost
50 years under some exemption. President Obama's intention was to require that
no file be classified indefinitely, and your decision to postpone release of
these files frustrates that order and the intent of the JFK Act and the Assassination
Records Review Board.

What we ask for is not unreasonable.

We want the NARA to
identify and count the number of JFK assassination documents still being
withheld, how many pages they contain and the reasons for their being withheld.

We want the NARA
to include all the remaining withheld JFK assassination-related records, as
defined in the JFK Records Act in the National Declassification Review process,
as originally intended, and release them in 2013, the 50th anniversary year
of the assassination.

We want the NARA
to rigorously assume the role previously performed by the ARRB, as the law
requires, and continue to fulfill the remaining work until it is done.

Since a copy of the Air Force One tapes were recently
discovered, the allegedly destroyed Secret Service documents were found among
the effects of a former agent, and the records of the first chief counsel of
the HSCA were not obtained by the ARRB, we want the NARA
to resume the search for all relevant JFK assassination records, including
federal, state, local, foreign and personal files, secure them and make them a
part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection, open to the public.

We want you, Mr. Ferriero, as the Archivist of the United
States, to do your sworn duty and fulfill
the requirements of the JFK Act so you can, as the law requires, report to
Congress that the last JFK assassination record has been released to the
public.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RESEACHERS TO PICKET THE
NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Historical researchers will picket the National Archives
on Constitution Avenue between Seventh and Ninth Streets, N.W. near the Visitor’s
Entrance on Monday, October 8, 2012 between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 Noon and
distribute an open letter to David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United
States.

The purpose of the picket will be to protest the decision
by the National Archives not to declassify documents related to the assassination
of President John Kennedy, a decision made at the request of the Central
Intelligence Agency.

The National Archives' decision is in violation of
President Barack Obama' executive order of Tuesday, December 29, 2009 that
"no information may remain classified indefinitely" as part of sweeping overhaul of the executive branch's
system protecting
classified national security information.

President Obama also established a new NationalDeclassificationCenter
at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical
documents by centralizing their review. The President set a four year deadline
for processing a 400-million-page backlog of such records that originally
included the JFK assassination records to be released on the 50th
anniversary of Kennedy’s death, but later reneged on that commitment.

The October 8th picket is in protest that
decision by the Archives and the continued withholding of JFK assassination
records past the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

50 YEARS IS LONG ENOUGH! – FREE
THE JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS

Many thanks to Paul Kuntsler for coordinating this protest. It will be a non-violent protest to free the remaining withheld JFK assassination records, not a debate on the assassination. - BK

Monday, September 3, 2012

“If it ever becomes known what specific individuals
comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, the emergence of such individuals,
dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the
assassination because we have long known who killed President Kennedy. Could
any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able
to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring
such a broad spectrum of internal forces to cover up the crime and control the
institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy
a false mystery for 50 years?” - Gaeton
Fonzi

AS I REMEMBER GAETON – Bill Kelly

After reading of his investigative and journalistic exploits
for years I finally got to meet Gaeton Fonzi on November 22nd, 1998
when I was sitting on Zapruder’s perch on the Grassy Knoll when he walked by. I
recognized him and introduced myself, and we talked for quite a while.

Since he was from Philadelphia
and I was from Camden, just across
the river, we were from the same neck of the woods, and had a number of mutual
friends, mainly in the media, but especially Alan Halpern, who was Fonzi’s
chief mentor. Halpern had edited my article on the real James Bond, (the Philadelphia
ornithologist from whom Ian Fleming had appropriated the name for 007), and
served as a consultant to Atlantic City Magazine, where some of my articles
were published.

Although we were from the same area and had a number of
mutual acquaintances, it was odd and quite fitting that the one and only time
our paths would cross was on the Grassy Knoll on the anniversary of the
assassination.

I remember reading about Gaeton Fonzi in the newspapers in
1977, somewhat jealous of the reporter investigating the assassination of
President Kennedy for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA),
wishing I was in his shoes. The news reports however, weren’t so much about the
assassination as they were about the committee’s chief counsel Richard Sprague,
who would eventually get fired for doing a good job.

I knew of both Fonzi and Sprague from Philadelphia,
where Fonzi was a writer for the Philadelphia Magazine in its heyday, and
Sprague was a former district attorney who had successfully prosecuted Tony
Boyle for the murder of his United Mine Workers Union rival Jock Yablonski.
Sprague and Fonzi, I thought, were the best guys to be in their respective
positions, and if left alone they would finally get to the truth behind the
assassination of President Kennedy.

Others must have thought the same thing, as detailed in
Fonzi’s Washingtonian Magazine article and his book The Last Investigation (Thunders Mouth Press, 1993), since after
only six months Sprague was forced out as Chief Counsel and Fonzi had to work
under the leadership of G. Robert Blakey, an organized crime expert who would
redirect the committee’s investigation away from the CIA
and towards the Mafia.

Fonzi went to school at the University
of Pennsylvania but learned to be a
journalist from Alan Halpern, the unflappable editor of Philadelphia Magazine,
where Fonzi’s schoolmate Charles “Chuck” MacNamara also worked. Together, and
with others, they helped create the prototype of a regional city magazine
driven by creative and hard hitting feature articles.

Over the years a lot of people would have paid Fonzi not to write about them except he had scruples.

Fonzi was driven to the Kennedy assassination by Philadelphia
attorney Vince Salandria, and Fonzi would become one of Salandria’s committee
of correspondence that discussed matters related to the assassination.

Fonzi’s contacts and investigative journalism background go
him a job on the staff of Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, who was one
half of the Schweiker-Hart subcommittee of the Church Committee – the Senate
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
Activities. An off-shoot of the Watergate scandal, the Church Committee limited
its investigation into the Kennedy assassination to cover only certain areas
that fell within its purview and assigned Colorado Democrat Gary Hart and
Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Schweiker to cover these Kennedy
angles.

In the course of his work for the Senate Committee Fonzi
interviewed a number of anti-Castro Cubans, including Antonio Veciana, who
acknowledged that from the time he worked for a bank in Havana
in 1960 until the mid-1970s, he had an intelligence case officer who directed
many of his anti-Castro activities, including a number of failed plots to kill
Castro.

While describing his case officer, who went by the name of
“Maurice Bishop,” Veciana told Fonzi of his many meetings with “Mr. Bishop,” including
one in Dallas in the summer of 1963
during which “Bishop” also met with another agent – Lee Harvey Oswald.

Based on Veciana’s description, a sketch artist drew a
facial portrait of “Maurice Bishop,” which looked familiar to Senator
Schweiker, who was driving down the highway when he remembered exactly who –
the former CIA officer who had recently
testified before his Senate committee – David Atlee Phillips.

At the time Veciana saw Oswald and Phillips together – in
the lobby of the Southland Building in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1963,
Veciana was the director of the anti-Castro Cuban group Alpha 66, Oswald was the
nominal leader of a Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) chapter and Phillips
was the head of the CIA’s Cuban operations
in the Western Hemisphere, which included overseeing the FPFC.

Shortly after meeting in Dallas,
Oswald went to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico
City, where Phillips was stationed, and was
responsible for the surveillance of those embassies.

When questioned under oath by the Congressional committee,
Phillips denied knowing Veciana or ever meeting with Oswald, even though others
have confirmed that Phillips did use the name “Bishop” and Phillips lied to the
Congressional investigators about other points.

After a few years, Fonzi wrote a lengthily article about the
whole affair, edited by Alan Halpern and published in Washingtonian Magazine,
an article that was also used as the basis for his book The Last Investigation.

Others have written about the Bishop-Phillips connection,
including Anthony Summers (Conspiracy,
Not In Your Lifetime) and David Leigh, a British exchange student who Ben
Bradlee had commissioned Leigh to write an article for the Washington Post, but
was never published.

The Last Investigation
is not Fonzi’s only book, as he also wrote a biography of Walter Annenberg, the
Philadelphia publisher of the Racing Form and TV Guide and served as Nixon’s ambassador to the Court of St.
James.

A few years after meeting Fonzi on the Grassy Knoll, I
talked with him on the phone a few times over some research items and knew he
was keeping up with the case via the South Florida Research Group. We also exchanged
emails over the news of the death of Alan Halpern, the former editor of
Philadelphia Magazine. [Alan Halpern RIP JFKCountercoup2: Alan Halpern RIP ]

At the Education Forum John Simpkin has posted Fonzi’s
speech accepting the 1998 Mary Ferrell Award at a Dallas Conference, [http://www.spartacus...uk/JFKfonzi.htm] which is tantalizing inconclusive and leads
you on to ask more questions and continue the pursuit of the truth.

Like most other Americans, after the initial shock of
President Kennedy's assassination had dimmed, we fell into the comfortable
assumption that the government was handling the matter judiciously, that the
prestigious panel of respected individuals, headed by the most prestigious
member of the American judicial system, would provide us with a thorough and
valid appraisal of exactly what had happened when President Kennedy was killed.
What led me to clip the article by Vincent Salandria is that it ran counter to
that assumption.

It dealt with only one aspect of the report - the sequence of events
surrounding the number and direction of the shots. But that just happened to be
the area assigned to another Philadelphia lawyer, a young assistant district
attorney whose quick intelligence and impressive record had landed him a staff
job on the Warren Commission. His name, of course, was Arlen Specter.

I didn't initially understand some of the technical and complex points Salandria
made in his article, but I did grasp the fact that what Salandria was implying
was that the Warren Commission Report was wrong...

Local reporters had, of course, asked Specter about the Warren Report when it
was released. He was vigorous in defense of its conclusions. He called the
Commission's investigation the most exhaustive and complete in history. The
single bullet theory, he insisted, was the only possible way to explain how Lee
Harvey Oswald had shot President Kennedy. The reporters dutifully reported what
he said.

Amazingly enough, even after all those months had gone by since the release of
the Warren Report, I was the first journalist to ask Specter about specific
details and about the Report's inconsistencies. I apparently caught Specter off
guard.

I was shocked by his confusions, his hemming and hawing, his hesitations and
evasions. This from someone who was the epitome of the always cool, collected
and verbally masterful lawyer, the former star of the Yale Law debating team. I
was even more shocked by his inability to provide valid explanations for some
of the most blatant inconsistencies in the Report.

I believe the most crucial was the discrepancy between the levels of the
so-called "exit" wound in Kennedy's throat and the holes in the back
of Kennedy's jacket and shirt. Why were the holes in his back lower than the
hole in Kennedy's throat? I still remember Specter hesitating, stuttering,
making a few false starts in attempting to answer that question. Finally, he
got up from his desk and came around to stand behind me. Well, he said, it was
because the President was waving his arm, and then, trying to illustrate why
the jacket would ride up, Specter pulled my arm high over my head - far higher
than the Zapruder film showed Kennedy waving his hand. "Wave your arm a
few times," Specter said, "wave at the crowd." And then jabbing
a finger at the base of my neck - not six inches below my collar, where the
holes in Kennedy's jacket and shirt were - Specter said, "Well, see, if
the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point
right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower
point."

"A lower point?" I repeated, wondering if Specter were trying to
confuse me or was confused himself.

If the entrance holes were at a lower point than the exit hole, how could
Oswald have shot Kennedy from the sixth floor window of the Book Depository?

In the end, Specter admitted they had what he described as - quote - "some
problems with that."

My interviews also revealed that the Commission had "some problems"
with other troublesome evidence, including the so-called "pristine"
bullet, the angle of Governor Connally's wounds, the timing of the shots.
"Some problems," indeed. I'll never forget the numbing disbelief I
came away with after my interviews with Specter. Vince Salandria was right, the
Warren Report was wrong, there had to have been a conspiracy.

We were young once and not so brave. We wanted to cling to the myth of a
mystery. We wanted to hang onto the questions of motivation and parade the
usual suspects and the illusion of a dilemma before the American people. Could
the Mob have killed President Kennedy? Could the KGB have killed President
Kennedy? Could Castro have killed President Kennedy? Could anti-Castro Cubans
have killed President Kennedy? Could the CIA
have killed President Kennedy?

I suggest to you that if it ever becomes known what specific individuals
comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, those individuals will have some
association with any or all of the above. And still the emergence of such
individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth
about the assassination. Because we have known -- and have long known - who
killed President Kennedy.

Could any but a totally controlling force - a power elite within the United
States Government itself - call it what you will, the military-intelligence
complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment -
could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been
able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then
bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and
then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of
President Kennedy a false mystery for 35 years?

Is there any doubt that the Warren Commission deliberately set out not to tell
the American people the truth?

There is a brief glimpse, an illustration of the level at which that deceit was
carried out, in an incident that occurred during the Warren Commission's
investigation. Commission chairman Earl Warren himself, with then
Representative Gerald Ford at his side, was interviewing a barman, Curtis
LaVerne Crafard. Crafard had worked at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club before he was
seized by FBI men as he was hightailing it out of town the day after the
assassination, having told someone, "They are not going to pin this on
me!"

In the interview, Warren asks
Craford what he did before he was a bartender.

"I was a Master sniper in the Marine Corps," Craford answered.*

The next question that Warren
immediately asked was: "What kind of entertainment did they have at the
club?"

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia
Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the
1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of
Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach,
Fla.

"His whole obsession was the Kennedy
assassination," Marie, his wife of 55 years, said.

"He was in constant contact with everybody about
that" for years, she said. "He went and spoke in Dallas
almost every year" at gatherings where the assassination there was
discussed.

Mr. Fonzi was an investigator for the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1977 and for the House Select Committee
on Assassinations for two years after that, his wife said.

His book on the matter, The Last Investigation, was
published in 1993 by Thunder's Mouth Press.

Born in Philadelphia,
Mr. Fonzi graduated from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he
wrote for the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Mr. Fonzi was briefly a reporter at the Delaware County
Daily Times before serving Stateside as an Army infantry officer.

He joined what was then Greater Philadelphia magazine, a
publication for business executives, in 1959 and helped turn it into a
trendsetting publication.

"My father was one of the owners," Lipson said.
After the elder Lipson left in 1960, he said, "I was a brash, precocious
kid who made the changes that really began around '60."

Mr. Fonzi, Lipson said, "was there in the beginning
with me."

Working closely with editor Alan Halpern, "he did a lot
of great stuff" that wasn't being covered by the region's newspapers.

"In those days, we wanted to cure all the ills of the
world," Lipson said, and "it could take him years" to gather
enough to finally publish an investigation.

For instance, in the years before The Inquirer was bought by
what became the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and made into a nationally
acclaimed newspaper, Mr. Fonzi discovered that one of its reporters, Harry
Karafin, had a questionable sideline.

Mr. Fonzi and fellow magazine reporter Greg Walter
"authored a lengthy piece accusing Harry J. Karafin of having extorted
money from his subjects in exchange for not publishing stories about their
misdeeds," The Inquirer reported in Mr. Walter's 1989 obituary.

"It was a piece that led to Mr. Karafin's indictment
and imprisonment."

Gil Spencer, the late top editor at the Philadelphia Daily
News, said in that 1989 story that Mr. Walter and Mr. Fonzi "were the
first to turn regional magazines into investigative instruments.

"And it certainly hit Philadelphia
for a real lick, as far as investigative reporting went at that time."

Gaeton Fonzi spent months away from his family conducting
interviews in WashingtonD.C.,
worked countless hours retrieving documents and files, and dedicated years to
writing what would be one of the most recognized publications concluding a
conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“He was writer in his soul,” said his wife, Marie Fonzi. “He
never stopped thinking about the stories, about the assassination.”

He wrote more than 100 feature articles as senior editor of
Philadelphia Magazine, wrote countless stories for publications nationwide, was
the editor of Miami Magazine and the senior editor at Gold Coast Magazine. He
won numerous awards for his writing, including two local Sigma Delta Chi Awards
and a National Sigma Delta Chi Award.

Recognized as a successful investigative journalist, Gaeton
Fonzi was selected to join the U.S. Senate and House Committees that
investigated the JFK assassination.

Fonzi died Thursday in the arms of his wife of 56 years after
having battled Parkinson’s disease for years. He was 76.

He was born in West New York,
N.J. and grew up playing baseball and
listening to country music. His love for the New York Yankee’s and admiration
of Joe DiMaggio accompanied him all his life.

He met Marie at the University
of Pennsylvania where they both
studied journalism. He was the editor of the school newspaper and spent the
afternoons hanging out with Marie and doing homework with her.

After college, he took a job at the Delaware County Daily,
where he filled in for writers who went out on vacation. During the draft for
the Korean War, Fonzi became an infantry officer in the U.S. Army but hated the
mud, discomfort and dusty roads, his wife recalled.

In 1972, Fonzi left Philadelphia
to work with his colleague, Bernard McCormick, at Miami Magazine and later Gold
Coast Magazine.

“It was his reputation that got us to strive,” said
McCormick. “His success in investigative reporting was because everyone trusted
him and would take risks to give him information.”

When the magazine was sold in 1975, Fonzi went to work for
Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, who headed a committee reopening the
investigation of JFK’s murder. Fonzi became the investigator in Florida
who explored CIA connections to anti-Castro
Cuban groups and possibly to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Schweiker’s committee was dissolved but after Fonzi found a
connection between the groups, he continued working for a house sub-committee
for the next two years. In 1993, after a decade of research on the
assassination, his book “The Last Investigation’’ was published.

In Florida,
Fonzi was recognized for teaming up with Fort Lauderdale
police organized crime specialist Douglas Haas to expose Michael Raymond, a
notorious con man suspected of defrauding and then murdering several
Floridians.

“He had tremendous instincts for wrongdoings,” said
McCormick. “He got a lot of publicity but he was modest about his work and was
never a bragger.”

Fonzi was quiet but known for being the master of the
one-liner, said Marie. In his spare time, he liked to run with his wife and go
out on his boat. He never missed the Columbus Day Regatta on Biscayne
Bay, where they shared beer and had balloon fights. He cooked
dinner every night, wrote letters to friends and discussed the beauty of
written work with his wife.

He retired and moved to SatelliteBeach with his wife in 2003. That
same year, Fonzi was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

In addition to his wife, Fonzi is survived by his four
children, Rene, Guy, Maria and Christopher Fonzi. A funeral Mass will be sung
at 11a.m. Tuesday at Holy Name of
Jesus Catholic Church, 3050 N. A1A, Indialantic,
Fla. A luncheon reception will follow at 1 p.m. at City Tropics Bistro, 249
Fifth Avenue, Indialantic, Fla.

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, reporter who wrote of JFK's killing

By Walter F. Naedele

Inquirer Staff Writer

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia
Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the
1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of
Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach,
Fla.

"His whole obsession was the Kennedy
assassination," Marie, his wife of 55 years, said.

"He was in constant contact with everybody about
that" for years, she said. "He went and spoke in Dallas
almost every year" at gatherings where the assassination there was
discussed.

Mr. Fonzi was an investigator for the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1977 and for the House Select Committee
on Assassinations for two years after that, his wife said.

His book on the matter, The Last Investigation, was published in 1993 by Thunder's Mouth
Press.

Born in Philadelphia,
Mr. Fonzi graduated from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he
wrote for the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Mr. Fonzi was briefly a reporter at the Delaware County
Daily Times before serving Stateside as an Army infantry officer.

He joined what was then Greater Philadelphia magazine, a
publication for business executives, in 1959 and helped turn it into a
trendsetting publication.

"My father was one of the owners," Lipson said.
After the elder Lipson left in 1960, he said, "I was a brash, precocious
kid who made the changes that really began around '60."

Mr. Fonzi, Lipson said, "was there in the beginning
with me."

Working closely with editor Alan Halpern, "he did a lot
of great stuff" that wasn't being covered by the region's newspapers.

"In those days, we wanted to cure all the ills of the
world," Lipson said, and "it could take him years" to gather
enough to finally publish an investigation.

For instance, in the years before The Inquirer was bought by
what became the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and made into a nationally
acclaimed newspaper, Mr. Fonzi discovered that one of its reporters, Harry
Karafin, had a questionable sideline.

Mr. Fonzi and fellow magazine reporter Greg Walter
"authored a lengthy piece accusing Harry J. Karafin of having extorted
money from his subjects in exchange for not publishing stories about their
misdeeds," The Inquirer reported in Mr. Walter's 1989 obituary.

"It was a piece that led to Mr. Karafin's indictment
and imprisonment."

Gil Spencer, the late top editor at the Philadelphia Daily
News, said in that 1989 story that Mr. Walter and Mr. Fonzi "were the
first to turn regional magazines into investigative instruments.

"And it certainly hit Philadelphia
for a real lick, as far as investigative reporting went at that time."

Gaeton Fonzi was one of the most relentless investigators on
the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, remembered by
former colleagues with both awe and echoes of the impatience he inspired with
his pursuit of the full story behind the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy.

They called him Ahab.

Mr. Fonzi was also the staff member most publicly dismayed
by the committee’s final report,
which concluded in 1979 that the president “was probably assassinated as a
result of a conspiracy.”

Of course it was a conspiracy, said Mr. Fonzi, a journalist
recruited mainly on the strength of scathing magazine critiques he had written
about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted
alone in killing the president in Dallas
on Nov. 22, 1963. But who
were the conspirators? What was their motive? How could the committee close its
doors without the answers?

Mr. Fonzi, who died in Florida
on Aug. 30 at 76, nailed those questions to the committee’s locked doors,
figuratively, in a long article he wrote the next year for Washingtonian
magazine and in a 1993 book, “The Last Investigation.” In both, he chronicled
the near-blanket refusal of government intelligence agencies, especially the C.I.A.,
to provide the committee with documents it requested. And he accused committee
leaders of folding under pressure — from Congressional budget hawks, political
advisers and the intelligence agencies themselves — just as promising new leads
were emerging.

“Is it unrealistic to desire, for something as important as
the assassination of a president, an investigation unbound by political,
financial or time restrictions?” he asked in Washingtonian.

He never got the answer he had hoped for. Congress never authorized
a follow-up to the work of the committee, which, from 1977 to 1979, also
re-examined the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
concluding that it, too, “likely” resulted from an unspecified conspiracy.

But historians and researchers consider Mr. Fonzi’s book
among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and
credit him with raising doubts about the government’s willingness to share
everything it knew. The author Jefferson Morley, a former reporter for The
Washington Post, said “The Last Investigation” had refocused attention on a
handful of reported contacts between C.I.A. operatives and Oswald — tantalizing
leads that had long been fascinating to conspiracy buffs but that had never
been fully scrutinized by a veteran investigative reporter.

The Central Intelligence Agency has denied that any such
contacts occurred, and Mr. Fonzi spent most of his two years with the committee
crisscrossing the world trying to prove otherwise. He considered it impossible
that the C.I.A. had never made contact with Oswald, a former Marine who
defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, repatriated with
his Russian wife and baby in 1962, and settled in Dallas,
where he openly espoused Communist views.

“We called him Ahab, because he was so single-minded about
that white whale,” said G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and staff director
of the House committee, now a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law
School. The white whale for Mr. Fonzi was the meaning of those supposed contacts.

Mr. Blakey was criticized by Mr. Fonzi as overly deferential
to the C.I.A., and he now concedes that Mr. Fonzi was probably right on that
score. Mr. Blakey said he was shocked in 2003 when declassified C.I.A.
documents revealed the full identity of the retired agent who had acted as the
committee’s liaison to the C.I.A. The agency never told Mr. Blakey that the
agent, George Joannides, had overseen a
group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Dallas
in the months before the assassination, when Oswald had two well-publicized
clashes with them.

At the time of the revelation, the C.I.A. said Mr. Joannides
had withheld nothing relevant from the committee. Mr. Joannides died in 1990.

“Mr. Joannides obstructed our investigation,” Mr. Blakey
said. Asked how that had affected the committee’s work, he added: “We’ll never
know. But I can say that for a guy like Gaeton, a guy who really wanted to know
what happened to Kennedy, it kind of tortured him.”

Gaetano Fonzi was born in Philadelphia
on Oct. 10, 1935, to
Leonora and Gaetano Fonzi, a barber. (He later shortened his first name.) After
graduating from the University of Pennsylvania,
he was a reporter and editor at Philadelphia Magazine. In one article, he and a co-author
revealed that a former star reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Harry J.
Karafin, had extorted money from local businessmen with threats of unflattering
coverage.

Mr. Fonzi died of complications of Parkinson’s disease at
his home in Manalapan, Fla.,
his wife, Marie, said. He is also survived by four children, Irene, Guy and
Christopher Fonzi and Maria Fonzi-Gonzalez; eight grandchildren; and two
great-grandchildren.

In Florida,
Mr. Fonzi worked for Miami and Gold
Coast magazines, writing investigative articles. He also wrote several other
books, including a biography of the media mogul and philanthropist Walter
Annenberg. But the Kennedy assassination remained the story that consumed him.

“He thought the murder of President Kennedy was a turning
point in history,” his wife said. “He said it was the point when the American
people stopped trusting their government.”

Those who take up a study the assassination of President
Kennedy quickly notice that there are many Cuban connections to the murder and
most independent researchers eventually recognize that the Cuban angles are the
key to understanding the crime.

While Cuba provides
common events and recurring characters who figure in the DealeyPlaza drama,
the focus has rightly been on the plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.

As it was put by the second chief counsel to the HSCA G.
Robert Blakey, "I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an
appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its
relationship to Oswald...I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on
any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on
one point, you may reject all of his testimony...We now know that the Agency
withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia
plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have
followed a different path in its investigation.”

The Warren Commission’s ignorance of the plots to kill
Castro is the single most important reason behind the Commission’s failure to
determine what really happened at DealeyPlaza. 1.

“We now know to a fairly good degree of certitude what
happened,” says former FBI agent Bill Turner. “First of all the motives were
piling up – JFK had supposedly withdrawn air cover during the Bay of
Pigs, failed to invade Cuba during
the Cuban Missile Crisis and proceeded to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
JFK was also on a second track to Cuba,
which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Castro to bring about a
détente. The motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I
think it’s pretty obvious, with the compilations of the information that we
have today, that the whole thing, the mechanism of it came out of the
allegiance between the CIA and the
web of Cuban exiles and the Mafia. They already had an assassination
apparatus set up for killing Castro, and they just switched targets, and they
killed Kenned instead.” 2.

Turner’s take – that the mechanism for the assassination of
JFK was the same apparatus set up for killing Castro is supported by others,
including David Atlee Phillips, who is quoted as stating that, “I was one of
the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald…we gave him the mission of
killing Fidel Castro of Cuba…I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know
he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did
not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I
share that guilt.” 3.

Of the over six hundred documented plots to kill Castro, the
ones that are most discussed are the CIA-Mafia
plots that began during the Eisenhower administration and were ostensibly
terminated in 1962. 4.

Of the many plots to kill Castro, a half dozen or so had
direct connections to DealeyPlaza, 5. , and of them, one stands
out conspicuously – the Valkyrie Plot. The Valkyrie plot was ostensibly based
on the July 20, 1944 attempt
to kill Hitler and was adapted by the CIA for
use against Castro in Cuba.
If any of the plots to kill Castro were redirected to kill JFK at DealeyPlaza,
the Valkyrie plot is the one. This is an analysis of the Valkyrie Plot and its
relationship to the assassination of JFK.

“On page 16, col. 7 of the New York Times, January 20, 1970, Senator Richard

Russell stated that the Commission was never able to find
those who encouraged Lee Harvey Oswald.”

THE VALKYRIE PLOT AT DEALEYPLAZA

Volkmar Schmidt was the first to bring up the subject of the July 20, 1944 Hitler
assassination plot when he mentioned it to the accused assassin Lee Harvey
Oswald at a private party one evening in February of 1963. 6.

Schmidt said that while growing up in Germany he
was best friends with the son of Professor Whilhelm Kuetemeyer, who became
somewhat of a surrogate father and mentor. According to Schmidt, Kuetemeyer was
also involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, as were two of his
associates.

Schmidt explained that it was a reverse psychology technique
taught to him by Professor Kuetmeyer that he used on Oswald during a three hour
conversation in which he also mentioned the plot to kill Hitler.

Schmidt: Yes, Professor Kuetemeyer
told me you know, to deal with people like this who are disturbed, you have to
use empathy, be slightly over zealous yourself to link up with them and [bring]
that total insanity towards reality. When I heard how hateful he was towards
Kennedy and Cuba, which was kind of irrational, I tried to say "hey, there’s
something much more real to be concerned about," because I don’t know
about Castro, but I know about this Walker, he’s kind of a Nazi, yea? Not so bad as
those Nazis in Germany, but I had specifically mentioned to Lee Harvey Oswald,
that Walker had given a speech to the students at the Mississippi campus and
those guys went off and killed a couple of journalists.

Kelly: So do you think your conversation with Oswald about Walker
may have instigated Oswald to take a pot shot at Walker?

Schmidt: Yes, he did, and naturally
it was a terrible responsibility, and for years when I drove past the underpass
I literally had to cry because, you know. But I exonerate myself completely
because I had the best intent, embarrass Kennedy, and I certainly didn’t tell
him to take a pot shot at him...I may have triggered it. Actually, a few days
after I talked with him, he bought his weapons.

As for the association to those in the plot to kill Hitler, Schmidt mentions
Professor Kuetemeyer, who "…was
certainly, and many of his friends were in the circle of those who tried to
kill Hitler - Stauffenberg, and several of his close friends were executed, and
one of the sons of his friends, lived at his house and became and is still a
very close friend of mine - Fritz from Holland. Fritz first name Frederick, Von
- the symbol of nobility, Von Halen. He was actually arrested before the plot
came out. He knew about the plot and was tortured to death. And another
gentleman who was involved was Von Trott, a friend of Kuetemeyer."

A few years ago I wrote an article about how some of those
individuals involved in this plot to kill Hitler were also entwined with the
events at Dealey Plaza, [July 20, 1944 - November 22, 1963] in which I detail
the associations between five people who were entwined in both plots – Schmidt,
Kuetmeyer, Allen Dulles, Mary Bancroft and Hans Bernd Gisevius. 7.

Among those involved in the plot to kill Hitler was one Dr. Hans Bernd
Gisevius, a Gestapo officer who tried to get the OSS officer
in Switzerland -
Allen Dulles, to help a high level cabal of German military officers eliminate
Hitler, broker a separate peace with the Western Allies, and then fight the
Russians together. This plot evolved into the operation code named Valkyrie
that resulted in the July 20,
1944 bomb explosion at the Fuhrer’s “Wolfschanze” bunker
headquarters near Rastenburg, Germany.8.

We know this from Mary Bancroft, the stepdaughter of G.W. Barron, the founding
publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who was Allen Dulles’ agent and mistress
at the time, and served as an intermediary between Dulles and Gisevius.

“Remember, the facts are not the truth. They only indicate
where the truth may lie.” – C. W. Barron

As related in her book “Autobiography of a Spy,” Mary Bancroft was also a close
personal friend of Michael Paine’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young. Their
friendship dated from the late 1920s when Ruth Forbes Paine was married
to New York architect
Lyman Paine, one of the founders of the Trotyskite movement in the U.S. and
father of Michael Paine. In her book Bancroft recalled her many prohibition era
cocktail conversations with Lyman Paine and visiting the Forbes family island
off Massachusetts with
Ruth.

Bancroft and Ruth Forbes Paine were traveling overseas
together on an ocean liner when Bancroft met her future husband, a Zurich
businessman. In Switzerland,
she hooked up with Dulles, became his personal assistant, translated Gisevius’
manuscript, (a history of the Third Reich), and helped support the Valkyrie
Plot.

After a number of failed attempts, on July 20, 1944, Col. Claus Schenk Grav
von Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb under the map table next to Hitler,
left the bunker, witnessed the explosion and then flew back to Berlin where
he met with Gisevius. Together they drew up press releases to counter Goebel’s
propaganda, but when it became clear that the bomb failed to kill Hitler, those
implicated were rounded up and executed. But Gisevius escaped, using false
identification provided by Allen Dulles, through his personal assistant Mary
Bancroft.

Hans B. Gievius

Since Hitler survived the explosion and the plot failed,
hundreds, some say over a thousand Germans were rounded up and executed, or
were given the opportunity to commit suicide, as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
did. For those who say that hundreds of people can’t conspire to keep a secret,
the Valkyrie Plot is a good example of a complex conspiracy, a covert operation
that almost succeeded, but in failing, led to the execution of many people.

If JFK had not been killed with the fatal head shot, and had
survived, a similar investigation, led by his brother, would have quickly
uncovered the fact that the alleged weapon was owned by Oswald, who had spent
the previous night at the home of Michael Paine, whose mother was best-friends
with Allen Dulles’ chief agent in the Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler. But with
Dulles on the Warren Commission, the CIA
plots to kill Castro as well as the Paine’s relationship with Mary Bancroft
were kept from the Commission.

Chief among Bancroft’s chores for Dulles was to serve as
liaison to Hans B. Gisevius, a major player in the Valkyrie Plot.

Unlike the other victims of the failed assassination
attempt, Gisevius survived, spending weeks in hiding until he received the
identify documents sent to him by Dulles and Bancroft that allowed him to
escape to Switzerland.
After the war Gisevius testified against other Nazis at Nuremberg and
helped send some to the gallows.

Gisevius testifying at Nuremberg

Then, on a $5,000 a month CIA retainer
arranged by Dulles, Gisevius came to America and
moved in with Tom Braden, head of the CIA’s
International Organizations Division. 9.

When Gisevius came to America he moved in with the CIA’s
Tom Braden, while Oswald, upon returning home from the Soviet Union with his
Russian wife, fell in with George DeMohrenschildt and a tight-knit community of
anti-Communist White Russians, and the Oswald family eventually moved in with
the Paines.

Oswald met Volkmar Schmidt at the same February 1963 party set up specifically
for the Oswalds to meet the Paines. At the party Schmidt gave Oswald a three
hour history lesson, applying the Hitler assassination analogy to General Walker,
while Oswald’s wife would meet Ruth Paine, Michael’s wife, who would become the
Oswald family's chief benefactor. 10.

Just think, Schmidt asked Oswald, how history would have
changed if Hitler had been assassinated?

It seems the CIA was
thinking exactly the same thing at the same time – as reported in an important
memo written by Col. Walter Higgins, which details what occurred at a meeting
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September
25, 1963. 11.

That was the day President Kennedy left on his Conservation
Tour, Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico
City and Ruth Paine drove Marina and
Oswald’s daughter to her home in Irving, Texas.

THE HIGGINS MEMO – CIA BRIEFING
OF JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

At a September
25, 1963 Pentagon meeting chaired by Air Force General Curtis
LeMay, Desmond FitzGerald, the officer in charge of the CIA’s
Cuban desk, briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the CIA’s
Cuban operations, including one patterned on the Valkyrie Plot.

But the convoluted way in which we come to know about the
Joint Chief’s briefing is a lesson in itself. It was gossip columnist Liz Smith
who first called attention to it indirectly because of the Tom Cruise movie “Valkyrie.”

Around the same time the 2008 Valkyrie movie came out, Lamar
Waldron and Thom Hartman published a book “Legacy of Secrecy,” a follow-up on their previous
book “Ultimate Sacrifice,” which surmises that the Mafia hijacked one of
the CIA plots to kill Castro to
assassinate Kennedy. 12.

In one of a number of columns Liz Smith devoted to promoting
Waldron’s work, the New York Post columnist mentioned the plots to kill Castro.
She said one was specifically designated by the CIA
to get some disenchanted Cuban military officers to stage a coup, which would
prompt the US government
to support the dissident officers once Castro was removed from power,
ostensibly by way of assassination.

In her column Liz Smith gave Waldron's “Legacy of Secrecy” a thumbs up when
she wrote, "You may wonder why the FBI and CIA withheld
information from the committee. By the time of JFK's murder, dozens of (Carlos)
Marcello associates had infiltrated a CIA operation
code-named AMWORLD, a project started by JFK himself. Writer Waldron revealed
this back in 2005. This was the CIA's
top-secret plan to cooperate with Cuba's
army commander, Juan Almeida, to stage a coup against Fidel Castro on Dec. 1, 1963. That was 10 days after
JFK's trip to Dallas.” 13.

The books by Hartman and Waldron, while important in some
respects, wrongfully blame the Mafia for killing Kennedy by hijacking the CIA plot
to kill Castro, and names Juan Almeida as the leader of the coup, while
documents released under the JFK Act clearly show that on the December 1 date
in question, Almeida was on a flight to Africa and not in position to lead a
coup against Castro. 14.

Smith then wrote: “(The CIA and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff even referred to the World War II plot to kill Hitler
as their role model for getting rid of Castro. You can see that story told
by Tom Cruise in the new movie ‘Valkyrie’).”

I had already pointed out the similarities of common
characters at both the Wolf’s Lair and DealeyPlaza,
but was quite surprised to learn from Liz Smith’s column that “the CIA and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff even referred to the World War II plot to kill Hitler
as their role model for getting rid of Castro.”

Since I have both the first edition hardbound and second,
expanded softbound versions of Waldron and Hartman’s “Ultimate Sacrifice” and their follow up “Legacy of Secrecy,” which Liz Smith was
ostensibly writing about, I carefully searched all three volumes without
finding any references to Hitler or the Valkyrie Plot.

I did, however, locate the relevant passage that Liz Smith
referred to in another book – Gus Russo’s “Brothers In Arms,” which continues to promote the original
cover story of the DealeyPlaza
operation – that Castro was behind the assassination. Despite the book’s
deceptively false conclusions, this reference is significant. 15.

The reference to the official documentation on this point is
buried in a footnote that is referenced from the following paragraph (p. 294):

“….Joseph Califano, of the Pentagon’s Cuban Coordinating
Committee, was being pressed by Des Fitzgerald for all the Defense Department
intel he could get on key Cuban military officers, scoping for a “mole’ within
the regime. Fitzgerald was about to brief the Joint Chiefs and, although
Califano was excluded from the meeting on September 25, Des and the Agency
were, according to memos later released, studying how German generals had
plotted to kill Hitler in order to develop a way to organize high-ranking Cuban
officers to kill Castro.”

“At the meeting that day, Des announced that they were
having ‘great success’ in finding such officers, and ‘that there were at least
ten high-ranking military personnel who were talking to the CIA
but as yet [were] not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence
[had not] yet developed.”

Thanks to Russo’s footnote, I was able to track down the
Higgins Memo in the Mary Ferrell archives and found it to be as close to a
smoking document as I have yet seen. While the entire memo is extremely
important for more than one reason, and deserves a more thorough and separate
analysis, the reference to the plot to kill Hitler is telling.

In his memo, under bullet point 13, Colonel Higgins wrote:
“13. He [FitzGerald] commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda
field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to
the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were
at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but
as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not
yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history; i.e., the plot
to kill Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an
approach.” 16.

If the Valkyrie Plot was seriously being studied in detail
in 1963 in order to develop a similar “approach” to be used against Castro,
the CIA didn’t have to go very far
to find some experts who knew about the Valkyrie Plot, as Allen Dulles, Mary
Bancroft and Hans Bernard Gisevious were all readily available to advise them.
Although they were all alive at the time, today we are left only with written
reports and documents, some of which were used in the making of the Tom Cruise
movie “Valkyrie,” which made an attempt to be historically accurate.

VALKYRIE – THE MOVIE & THE PLOT

The movie Valkyrie was not a box office sensation but it was
financially successful, it was in the popular mainstream, and it called
attention to the German heroes behind the plot, although in Germany Tom Cruise’s
Scientology background made it quite controversial.

The movie also garnered favorable reviews, including one by
Phil Villarreal, who noted that "There is a certain satisfaction in
watching the plot come together. Amazingly it was actually Hitler who signed
off on his own potential death warrant by authorizing changes in a contingency
plan that set reserve troops into action to suppress a government takeover. Von
Stauffenberg and his confederates wanted to use the troops to stifle the SS
after Hitler's death." 17.

A generic description of the movie says: “Valkyrie is a
2008 American historical thriller film set in Nazi Germany during World
War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers
to assassinate Adolph Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie
national emergency plan to take control of the country.” It also notes
that, “Stauffenberg is stunned to learn that no plans exist on the subject of
what is to be done after Hitler's assassination…(He) gets the idea of
using Operation Valkyrie, which involves the deployment of the Reserve
Army to maintain order in the event of a national emergency. The plotters
carefully redraft the plan's orders so that they can dismantle the Nazi regime
after assassinating Hitler. …with the rewritten Operation Valkyrie orders
signed by Hitler…” 18.

The word “valkyrie” stems from old Norse mythology, and is
composed of two words, the noun valr, meaning to be slain on the battlefield,
and the verb kjosa, meaning “to chose,” and refers to female Norse god
Valkyrja – the “chooser of the slain,” who decides who dies and wins in battle.
19.

The original Valkyrie plan was designed to deal with
internal disturbances in emergency situations, was written by
General Friedrich Olbricht, in his capacity as head of General Army
Office, and was approved by Hitler. 20.

In The Secret War
Against Hitler, William Casey wrote:

“….Inside Germany,
Abwehr chief Canaris had persuaded Hitler that the presence of millions of
foreign workers required a plan to deal with them if they rioted or revolted.
General Friedrich Olbricht, chief of staff at the headquarters of the Home Army
inside Germany, had developed the emergency plan, called Valkyrie, not so the
Home Army could suppress a possible revolt by foreign workers (that was merely
a cover for the Home Army to take over security in Berlin), but so the Home
Army could be used to suppress the Nazi party and the Gestapo and seize power
throughout the German domain. The code word Valkyrie had only to be promulgated
and army units would protect or take over all public facilities, and the
command post of the Home Army would have the power to impose martial law with
complete authority over all other services, including the SS…”

Indeed, besides some of the same characters being involved in both Valkyrie and
Dealey Plaza, specific attributes of the Valkyrie plan can be seen to have been
adapted and configured into the Dealey Plaza operation, including having the
intended victim actually approve the covert operations that would be used
against him (The Rex missions) as well as a Northwoods-style false flag
variation to blame the assassination on the others (Oswald and Castro).

During World War II the German conspirators convinced Hitler to alter the
contingency plans for a national emergency, what we now know as the Continuity
of Government (COG) plans, to permit the
Army Reserves to assume control, thus checkmating the SS and Gestapo.

Kennedy too, was convinced to approve certain special emergency and contingency
plans as well as specific covert actions against Cuba that
were used against him at DealeyPlaza.
These specific operations were administratively approved by JFK, but also
personally exposed to RFK as the coordinator of the Cuban operations,
effectively compromising him and checkmating him from properly responding to
his brother's assassination by making any moves against the assassins.

In The Making of
the President 1964, T.H. White noted that, “Of all the things Kennedy did
for Johnson, none, however, was perhaps more instantly important on the weekend
of Nov. 22 than a minor decision Kennedy made months before. He had decided
that, in the secret and emergency planning for continuity of American
government in the happenstance of a nuclear attack, Johnson should be given a
major role. Through Major General Chester V. Clifton, who acted as White House
liaison with the Department of Defense, all emergency operational planning was
made available to the Vice President in duplicate. These plans, envisioning all
things – from the destruction of all major cities to the bodily transfer of
governing officers to an underground capital – included, of course, detailed
forethought of the event of the sudden death of a President.” 21.

“Because he had participated in all these plans,” wrote White, “…the Vice
President; on the night of Nov.
22, 1963,…knew exactly all the intricate resources of command and
communications at his disposal. Beneath this lay the experience of a man who
had spent 30 years observing the work of the federal government, while beneath
that lay the instincts of a Texas country
boy. Now it was him to act.”

But according to Jim Bishop, in The Day Kennedy Was Shot, "Officials at the Pentagon
were calling the White House (WHCA) switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel
asking who was now in command. An Officer grabbed the phone and assured the
Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chief of Staff
' are now the President.” 22.

While everyone knows that the Constitutional lines of
authority descend from the President to the Vice President, according to the
National Command Authority (NCA), the ability to order the military to
undertake a nuclear attack goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense,
and then to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (then Roswell Gilpatrick).

It has been noted that, “In the wake of the Berlin crisis,
White House and national security staff reviewed emergency planning procedures
that had been established during the Eisenhower administration. As part of the
single integrated operation plan (SIOP) that would be used by the U.S. government
and armed forces in the case of a nuclear attack, Eisenhower’s staff and
advisors had also designed civil defense contingency plans for civilians. An
essential element in Eisenhower’s military planning was the National Command
Authority (NCA) nuclear…. release authority that would have decisive control
over the use of nuclear weapons if the President were disabled or killed.
According to Thomas B. Allen, of War
Games, the nuclear…release authority passes from a dead or disabled President
to the Secretary of Defense, and then, if necessary, to the Deputy Secretary of
Defense. Allen was unable to determine who would be next in the chain of
command since no two authorities consulted agreed to the passing of authority
beyond the Deputy Secretary of Defense…The NCA is not an abstraction. It is a
real concept embodied in military doctrine, especially the doctrine that
governs control over nuclear weapons.” 23.

If the President is unable to employ his authority to order
the use of nuclear weapons, the National Command Authority does not follow the
Constitution’s line of succession, but the release authority passes from a
disabled or dead President to the Secretary of Defense, and then, if necessary,
to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

While the NCA only controlled the use of nuclear weapons,
part of the DealeyPlaza operation
included elements that tried to blame the murder on Cuban Communists in an
attempt to stimulate an invasion of Cuba. Dallas authorities
and the local Army Reserve intelligence unit, in concert with Reserve officers
on the Dallas Police, fed information to the media and other military units
indicating Cuban Communists were behind the assassination.

Dallas Assistant DA Alexander told CIA media
asset Joe Goulden that he was going to charge Oswald with “furthering a
communist conspiracy” and Dallas PD officer Stringfellow, a member of the local
US Army Reserve unit, informed a Florida military
base that Cuban communists were behind the assassination. 24.

Of the ten Cuban officers mentioned by FitzGerald in the
Higgins memo, a few have been identified, including Juan Almedia, the primary
suspect in “Ultimate Sacrifice,” as well as the well documented case of Rolando
Cubella (AMLASH) and Raymon Guin Diaz (AMTRUNK), who the Cubans identified.

In his book, “Executive
Action – 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro,” Cuban G2 counter-intelligence
officer Fabian Escalante wrote, “While Cubela was in Brazil in
September 1963, JM/WAVE was executing
an important operation in Cuba under
the codename AM/TRUNK. It consisted of recruiting various officers from the
Rebel Army that the CIA believed
it could hook. Among them was ex-commander Ramon Guin Diaz, one of Cubela’s
closest friends, who would subsequently be an active participant in the CIA plans
to assassinate the Cuban prime minister…The plan had two parts: the first, the
assassination of Fidel, and the second, a coup d’etat instigated by Cubela’s
collaborators, backed by a US mini-invasion conducted with a brigade of Cuban
mercenaries who were training in Nicaragua under the command of Manuel Artime…”
25.

Just as Nazi Gen. Fromm, commander of the Home Army sat on
the fence during the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, then came down on the
conspirators once it was determined that Hitler was still alive, LBJ took the
oath of office immediately in order to circumvent the attempt to pass on the
National Command Authority to the Secretary of Defense. And as soon as LBJ was
informed of the intention of the Dallas authorities to charge Oswald with
“furthering a communist conspiracy,” he had his close aide Cliff Carter call
Dallas and put an end the talk of conspiracy “because it could lead to World
War III.” This was the “Tipping Point,”
when the “Phase One” Castro Commie cover story was replaced with the equally
implausible “Phase Two” deranged lone nut scenario.

THE HOMME REPORT

At the time of the Garrison investigation of the
assassination inNew Orleans,
a U.S. government
document reported that Jack Martin, who first called attention to the
association between Oswald and David Ferrie, had also attempted to implicate
Robert F. Kennedy in the plots to kill Castro.

The report reads in part: "According to Edward SUGGS,
aka Jack MARTIN (not a reliable source) [Guy] JOHNSON claimed to have a secret
US Senate document called the ‘Homme Report.’ This report allegedly proves that
Robert KENNEDY ‘had a contract out’ on Fidel CASTRO at the time President
Kennedy was assassinated...." 26.

Guy P. Johnson has been identified as a former assistant
district attorney in New Orleans and
Office of Naval Intelligence agent who had a secret Senate report written by
H.G. Homme, a legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary,
which allegedly implicated RFK in the attempted assassination of Castro and the
assassination of President Kennedy.

In an article in the Houstonian and in an
affidavit, Jack Martin and David Lewis, another New
Orleans associate of Oswald, Ferrie and Guy
Bannister, asserted that RFK approved the plots to kill Castro. They wrote
“…proof of this lies in a document shown us by none other than Guy P. Johnson,
Bannister’s old liaison officer and legal advisor. We call it the ‘Homme
Report,’ inasmuch as it involves one H.G. Homme, assistant legal counsel
of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary,…exposes the fact that the
‘genius’ RFK put out his own personal ‘contract’ (order to murder) on Cuba’s
Fidel Castro Luz, in good old Gestapo-Nazi fashion….Wheels silently moved, and
the trap had sprung!” 27.

In Counter-Intelligence Aspects of the JFK Assassination,
Mike Sylwester wrote:

“Another explanation was proposed by two of Banister’s
long-time employees, Jack Martin and David Lewis, in an affidavit they wrote
for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, dated 20 February 1968. Martin and Lewis said they
believed Banister was …had conspired with other high ranking traitors to alter
the index so that in case of crisis, the wrong people would be arrested….They
also implied that Banister was collaborating with Robert Kennedy, but
would double-cross him to bring the fateful crisis about. Specifically,
Banister was collaborating with Robert Kennedy to assassinate Fidel Castro,
which would boomerang into an assassination of President Kennedy….” 28.

Martin and Lewis also tie the assassination to the
re-organization of the civil defense response, which, along with the
attempt to implicate RFK in the Castro plots, ties it directly to the Valkyrie
plan. They refer to the “National Emergency Reoganization Plan,” which
they call “a piece of existing standby legislation already written into and
passed in Federal Statute, whereby they could invoke an immediate and
instantaneous dictatorship over the United States at the stroke of a pen on any
given or so-called emergency…” 29.

BLACKBALLING and NEUTRALIZING ROBERT F. KENNEDY

Another important aspect of the Dealey Plaza operation, also
taken from the Valkyrie Plot, was the neutralization of the key elements most
likely to oppose the assassination – the SS in the case of the July
20th 1944 Plot and Robert F. Kennedy in regards to Dealey Plaza.

Helmet Streikher, on CIA assignment
in Africa, Middle East (1961-1965)
acknowledged that, "One of the worst kept secrets in the CIAis the
truth about the President's murder. It wasn't Castro or the Russians. The men
who killed Mr. Kennedy were CIA contract
agents. It had to happen. The man was too independent for his own good. John
Kennedy's murder was a two-part conspiracy murder. One was the action end with
the killers; the other was the deeper part, the acceptance and protection of that
murder by the Intelligence apparatus that controls the way the world
operates." 30.

The second part of the assassination was the protection of
those actually responsible. The

Official Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines
a Covert Operation as “An operation that is so planned and executed as to
conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.” It is also
noted that “a covert operation differs from a clandestine operation in that
emphasis is placed on concealment of identity of sponsor rather than on
concealment of the operation.” 31.

In the assassination of President Kennedy we find that
covert anti-Castro Cuban operations, approved by JFK, and intentionally exposed
to RFK, were utilized in the assassination of President Kennedy, thus blackballing and neutralizing RFK from retaliation after the death of JFK.

Cuban Bay of Pigs flag presented to JFK

First the President was asked, in the spring of 1963, to
authorize certain CIA cover
operations against Cuba that
originated at the JMWAVE station in Florida,
which he did. Among these approved operations were maritime missions that took
place over the late summer and fall of 1963 and utilized anti-Castro Commando
teams that were sent into Cuba from
the CIA mother ship “Rex.”

On April 1,
1963 - April Fools Day, those responsible for covert
operations against Cuba,
the Cuban Coordinating Committee, suggested a number of specific plans to be
directed against Castro. Some of these specific operations that were approved
by the President involved maritime attacks against Cuba from Florida,
and included agents and operatives who later became entwined in the events of
that took place in Dallas. 32.

While the Cubans were being trained in Florida,
the President’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was personally introduced to some
of the CIA officers and
anti-Castro Cuban commandos who were to undertake these missions. It has been
documented that RFK visited the JMWAVE Headquarters on a number of occasions,
visits that stand out because of his altercations with William Harvey. Harvey was
then replaced by Desmond Fitzgerald, who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff
about the Valkyrie plot and personally met with Rolando Cubela (AMLASH). 33.

David Talbot, in his book Brothers, says that,
“The CIA tried to frame Robert
Kennedy for the Cubela (AMLASH) plot,” which was tied directly to the Valkyrie
plan. Talbot notes that FitzGerald introduced himself to Cubela as a “personal
representative of Kennedy’s. But the president’s brother had no idea the CIA was
using his name. Helms and Fitzgerald agreed it would be ‘totally unnecessary’
to inform Kennedy of their gambit.” Their gambit was the Valkyrie plot. 34.

US Army Ranger Capt. Bradley Ayers, assigned to the CIA to
train the Cubans, recalls two occasions RFK met with the CIA case
officers in Florida, once at a station party held at a safe house and another
at the Waloos Glades Hunting Camp staging area, where he was personally
introduced to some of the commandos who were to execute the covert
missions. 35.

According to Ayers, one of the CIA case
officers at JMWAVE, a German who went by the name of “Karl,” bore a remarkable
resemblance to Oswald, and one of the Cubans, Angelo Murgado, claims to have
even mentioned Oswald and his FPCC activities to RFK before the assassination.

Then in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Robert
Kennedy suspected the CIA and the
Cubans, asking both CIAdirector John McCone and his Cuban friend Enrique
“Harry” Ruiz Williams if their people were responsible for his brother’s
murder.

Jack Anderson wrote: “Sources would later tell me that
McCone anguished with Bobby over the terrible possibility that the
assassination plots sanctioned by the president's own brother may have
backfired.” RFK told Walter Sheridan: “I asked McCone if they had killed
my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me.”

RFK phoned Enrique Ruiz-Williams, his main contact in the Cuban group involved
in the plot to kill Castro. According to Haynes Johnson, an American journalist
working closely with the anti-Castro Cubans RFK said: “One of your guys did
it.” 36.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

It is apparent that the assassination of President Kennedy
was an offshoot of the CIA plans
to kill Cuban Primer Fidel Castro, specifically the Valkyrie Plot based on the July
20, 1944assassination attempt on Hitler.

There are five key elements of the Valkyrie Plot to kill
Hitler that we see used in the Dealey Plaza Operation, including the
involvement of related characters, the integration of the national emergency
plans, getting the victim to approve certain special operations that would be
used against him, the adopting of a false flag-Northwoods style deception to
blame the murder on Cuban Communists, and the neutralization of the opposition.

The Valkyrie Plot included the revising of the national
emergency response, the president’s approval of the Cuban covert operations
that would be used against him, the Northwoods-style false flag deception to frame
Oswald and blame the murder on Castro and the compromising of the most serious
potential resistance – RFK. Despite the complexity of the plan, it fits
like a glove over what happened at DealeyPlaza, and accounts for most, if
not all of the previously unexplained variables.

It is also quite apparent that while the plot remained the
same as what was planned for Castro, the switch in targets from Castro to
Kennedy did not occur on the street level in New Orleans, Florida or at Dealey
Plaza, but at the highest levels of government in Washington, where the
specific covert operations and emergency contingency plans were approved months
earlier.

That the assassination of the President remains a mysterious
enigma fifty years later can be directly attributed to the fact that it was
planned that way, a detailed and complex plan based on the Valkyrie plot to
kill Hitler, a plan that was not perfect, or carried out in its entirety, but
it was a plan that succeeded in killing Kennedy and protecting those actually
responsible for the crime.

Escalante,
Fabian. Executive Action – 634 Ways
to Kill Fidel Castro (Ocean Press, 2006, p. 167-169) Of the documented
plots, the ones with direct connections to Dealey Plaza are a) CIA-Mafia
plots (pre-62) b) The Hemingway house plot, c) The Amador Odio, d) The
Bayo-Pawley Affair, e) The Rex plot (NYT,
Nov. 1, 1963) the last of which is not among the 634 Ways but is mentioned by Carlos Bringuier in his book Red Friday.

Volkmar
Schmidt Interview. Kelly, William. Interview with Volkmar Schmidt,
January, 1995. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html
Note I ask Schmidt if he felt
responsible for Oswald taking a pot shot at Walker
and he said he felt most guilty when driving through DealeyPlaza. Also see Epstein, E. J.
Legend. The Secret Life of Lee
Harvey Oswald. (McGraw-Hill, 1978, p. 204).

Kelly,
William. The Tipping Point. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/tipping-point.html
Note: While I give only the two examples of Joe Goulden getting Asst. DA
Alexander to indict Oswald “in furtherance of a Communist conspiracy” and Don
Stringfellow’s 11/22/63 cable message to MacDill AFB in Florida, there are
other examples of the attempt to promote the original Castro Communist
cover-story (ie. Another Army Reserve officer Gannaway is quoted in
earliest news reports of Oswald’s Cuban Communist background, the DRE
release of radio debate, the bogus story that Oswald took money from
Cubans in Mexico City, etc.)

Martin,
Jack; Lewis, David. Houstonian (Feb. 20 1968) Martin, Jack and Lewis,
David (Affidavit, 20 Feb., 1968, also article in Houstonian, Feb. 20 1968) They say the National Emergency
Reogranization Plan can be found in Volume 27, Number 35, sub-headed Title
3, of 20th February, 1962, which is listed in the Federal Register,
National Archives, under Presidential Documents, Executive Order #10995,
through #11005 ff, and #11051, and Part One, Section 101-d http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/guy-p-johnson.html

Martin, Jack and Lewis, David (Affidavit, 20 Feb., 1968,
also article in Houstonian, 1968)
They say the National Emergency Reogranization Plan can be found in Volume 27,
Number 35, sub-headed Title 3, of 20th February, 1962, which is listed in the
Federal Register, National Archives, under Presidential Documents, Executive
Order #10995, through #11005 ff, and #11051, and Part One, Section 101-d.

Russo, Gus. Brothers
In Arms – The Kennedys, The Castros, and the Politics of Murder by Gus
Russo and Stephen Molton (Bloomsbury, 2008, p. 294)